Shape shifting historie

The Priest got a little crazy but did not disappoint.  Amidst headlines from MN's upcoming battle over the meaning of marriage rights and recent national issues, it did not seem so far-fetched.

I have moved on to Richard Bowes' Minions of The Moon, which is keeping me up late reading.  I am this writer's biggest fan.  I don't care how long or much you've read - I will fight you for the title.   Deceptively smooth and simple, his stories and novels just have that je ne sais quoi I read a ton of crap to find on rare occasions.  And this one really rocks.

I'm indulging in my recent musical obsession:  Dawes.  Yes, they dress like the J Crew catalog begat brats with the Abercrombie Fitch window display.  There's something about their faux mountain harmonies with LA themes and Neil Young worship that just hits the spot aurally.  Makes work flow smoothly, which is a plus.

Anyway.  Let the snow-rain-sleet fall.  I've still got 150 pages to go, and Tom Disch's The M.D. up next, all 400-some pages.

Auras

The sky was mottled pink and orange this a.m.  The photos came out more like  there was an aura around the trees.

I saw a classic black cat on my way to the train, classic like in all the children's books.  He was very content, sitting upright on the white snow bank.

Signs of the apocalypse?  Or just another end-of-the-month productivity blitz workday...  Only time will tell.

I'm on the bus between trains, as lightrail service and highway 55 have been out of service due to a snapped cable on the bike bridge.  Less and less people are showing up on the train every day.  Looks like a holiday on the platform.  The rest of us are getting good at herding, despite how hard Americans resist this at first.  I find it sort of amusing, especially with the people who usually try to hoard a whole double seat.

Hopefully all will be fixed by the vaunted massive feared 5 inch snow this weekend.  Can you tell we're out of the habit of weathering harsh winters?

The Priest moves along quite easily.  I'm in the 13th c. right now, with the 20th c. UFO conspiracist who's been transmentated into a mason being tortured in the dungeon as an Albigensian heretic.  Yes... yet very readable.

I'm liking the Minnesota supernatural series a lot more than the reviewers I've read on the web.  The over the top aspect and regionalisms they didn't like have been my favorite parts.

Never give up

The three-legged dog is determined to eat every last itty bitty lump of snow.  She is from Hibbing, the hometown of Robert Zimmerman and site of the film North Country.  They get lots of snow.  Plus she was living free in a graveyard with a black Lab for a year or so.  Snow and squirrels were staples.  It's kind of.funny though.

Reading reviews

Here's an interesting discussion of The Priest by Tom Disch: the NYT 1995 take. 

One of my quirks is that I like reading reviews of the book I'm reading if it has got a lot going on or is difficult to interpret.  In this case, my lack of knowledge about the religion at issue makes me wonder how much I'm missing.  Plus reading reviews or analyses helps me pay more attention,catch more references, etc.  I don't mind spoilers, either.  Weird, I know...

Why I read afterellen

.com.  Occasionally they mention someone like this:   LP. Apparently awesome at the Grammies, and signed to a major label though no actual LP has been produced.  Yet.

Check out  this and  this too.   Needs to work on reining in the vibrato and screamy screamy, but interesting...  Bieber and Cyrus, eat her shorts.  I'm sorry, when looking for "Fast Car" pulled up the faux-lesbian hip hop wannabe and searching for Joan Jett garnered a whole lot o' faking goin' on, I got mildly annoyed by the teen pop machine...

Winter is momentarily back

The long run was short, due to technical complications which have kept me from both blogging and running the last couple weeks.  And it was both windy and freaking cold.  But we got 'er done and my recently determined cancer-free parts remained happy over 5.5 miles of pounding.  So all is good. 

This mug was apt.  I think we all earned it, especially the halfers.  The Securian this year, which we ran the weekend before said cancer evaluation, was a frigid wind tunnel followed by a very sunny hill, a sharp up and down hill moment, and the wind tunnel again.  Many wardrobe adjustments were made in only 5k.  I got passed by a giant Y advertising the YMCA, who was running with two girls singing the Village People song cheerfully clueless about the lyrics other than the chorus, and then the male winner of the 10k.  Excitement in downtown St Paul...

Quote of the day

"They’re now going into maternity wards, about 600 maternity wards, into new mothers’ rooms right after they’ve given birth and offering them a new branded Disney onesie and signing them up for a new Disney mailing list, and they’re using this as –and this is a quote –a “beachhead” for a product line that hopes to be as vast and as all-consuming as the Disney princess line. They realized that that was the one childhood group that was not hooked on Disney products yet. So you start with the Disney princess onesie and work your way up to the Disney princess wedding dress. What I’m thinking is that maybe they can market a Snow White coffin so you can go womb to tomb."

 Peggy Orenstein to feministing 

This is old, but recently quoted in my alumni mag, which I decided to read before recycling...  Currently reading about changes in fairy tale psychology with Disney, it rang true...

Speaking of gender expectations, we went to see Girlyman last night, having not really heard much by them.  They rocked.  A poignant moment when the bass/guitar player described how the next song got her through her recent experience with leukemia upped the ante, and the song was awesome.  But the surprisingly faithful encore cover of "Staying Alive" was the capper.  Yes, girls, that should be your goal...

Decanting

During the AIDS epidemic, prior to the antiviral cocktails, I learned quickly to loathe the both-Party-oriented gay politicos who only cared about two agenda items, gay marriage and gays in the military.  But decades later, the actual likelihood as well as the subversive potential of both agendas has emerged.

This does make me realize the power of a critical mass of PFLAGS realizing the gay thing doesn't have to crush their mainstream dreams if society would just get over it too:

 WA state shakes.

Social change always moves in interesting ways.  That's the thing I'm noticing in reading old 80s and 90s political and social theory tracts.  I'm also noticing what so quickly gets forgotten, all the extreme acts of people being a&&hats in the moment.  The accounts of public meetings in the 1990s attempts to get a NY gay rights bill in Sarah Schulman's My American History, whew.  Flashbacks.

Saints and Sinners

Listening to a Peaches extended dance mix while drinking a homemade soy mocha, quite bitter, and starting Thomas Disch's The Priest.  I seem to be reading the Supernatural Minnesota series backwards.  Somehow that's appropriate, though it's really a matter of library availability.

Peaches up against samples of The Runaways, tasty.

I have been obsessed with odd and rare music videos lately.  Here're some awesome V-Day treats:

Hole channeling Stevie 

JJ Season of the Witch

KB in full Footloose glory 

That last one is for the ladies who look like teenage Kevin Bacon with motherly worry lines.  All of them...

I read Disch's 334, and liked the first 4/5 but then he lost me.  The structural layout diagram explains why: too arty.  Cool, though.